by Brad Warner

But before I begin, tomorrow, Saturday April 6, 2013 at 10 am we will have our usual Saturday zazen thing at 237 Hill St., Santa Monica, CA 90405. It’s open to everyone, beginners are encouraged. Please come!

Then on Sunday April 7, 2013 at 10 am come to Against The Stream 4300 Melrose Avenue. Los Angeles CA 90029 for our Sunday morning Zen service with chanting and bowing and stuff. This will be the second one of these.

Stick around afterward because at 11 am at the very same venue I will lead meditation and give a talk.

Also, there are still spaces available for our 3-day zazen retreat at Mt. Baldy April 26-28, 2013. Click here for further info and to register.

* * *

Yesterday and today I received several interesting links regarding burqas, hijabs and niqabs (and seetars too). For those who don’t know, here are the definitions pulled right off one of the links I received:

Niqab is a veil that covers a woman’s hair and face, leaving only eyes clearly visible.

Hijab is the Arabic word for curtain or cover. It is a piece of cloth worn by observant Muslim women to cover the hair, ears, and neck, leaving the face uncovered.

Seetar, sitar, a similar garment to the burqa/burkha, includes a niqab with a second tier screening the eyes with mesh. It covers the woman’s whole body and is usually black in color. In other words, the burqa essentially refers to a face and head covering that begins at the top of the head and drapes as long as the body. The burqa is generally associated to Aghanistan, the seetar to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

The first link I got was to Femen’s “Topless Jihad Day.” Femen is a group of women in Europe who protest naked for various feminist causes. I like them. Sometimes maybe they go too far. But sometimes maybe one has to go “too far” to make a point.

Before I go on, I need to mention that I’m running late today and I don’t have the time to give this article the real attention and polish the subject deserves. But I wanted to get into this while the news was still hot. So I’m writing this quickly and hoping for the best.

I find all of this stuff really fascinating. I have no qualms with women who wear hijab because they want to. But I do have a very big problem with societies and governments who require them to be worn. I also have very serious doubts concerning the burqa and the niqab. I find it very difficult (not impossible, just very difficult) to believe anyone really wears those by choice, especially the burqa. Maybe it happens. But it’s still hard for me to believe.

Human beings are really weird. All of the other great apes are hairy and do not need clothing. Why are humans virtually hairless? I’ve read a lot on the subject and it really seems like nobody knows. One old and largely discounted theory has it that at one point in our evolution humans were aquatic apes. The only other hairless mammals — dolphins, whales, seals and so on — live in the sea. So maybe that’s why we lost our hair. But it doesn’t seem likely.

I got a dong way longer than King Kong!

And there are other weird things about us. Our genitals are huge! I am hung far more impressively than even the biggest gorilla in the mountains of the Congo. All human males are. Human females have outrageously large boobs compared to the other great apes. And don’t get me started on our shapely butts. Plus we are always in heat. Most other mammals have a mating season. But not us. It’s mating season all year long for humans!

How did all that come to be? It doesn’t seem to fit very well with the current ideas about natural selection. And I, for one, strongly believe in the concept of natural selection. So there must be some reason. Could it be that we are sex crazy apes and have selectively bred ourselves for these traits? I really think that may be the case.

Almost all human societies require members to wear clothing that hides our genitalia. Why is that? I’ve often wondered. The best theories I’ve heard involve the idea that, in other great apes, exposure of the genitals signals only two things; that one is ready to mate or that one is ready to fight. Since our genitals are always exposed when we’re naked, we are constantly sending out these signals whether we want to or not. So somewhere in our distant past we realized we needed to cover up that stuff if we wanted to have anything like a stable civilization.

Religions always tend to be the most conservative when it comes to this because religions are supposed to be on the forefront of pro-social, moral behavior. In Buddhism, monks and nuns are generally required to dress modestly. In some sects this means wearing the kashaya or o-kesa, which in some ways is similar to the Muslim forms of modest dress. The head is not covered, but the hair is usually shaved off to achieve something like the same effect. One big difference between Buddhist societies and some (but not all) Muslim ones is that only monks and nuns are required to dress like this.

But all modern societies do require some kind of “modest dress” to one degree or another. Even string bikinis do cover up some of our naughty bits. And there are places in all societies where string bikinis are not allowed, where one must cover up more than that.

I’m not really reaching for any sort of conclusion here. I just think it’s all really fascinating to ponder. Maybe I’ll write more about this over the next few installments if anyone’s interested in continuing.

* * *

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68 Responses

I like being naked (I’m a male, in case anyone cares). When I was a kid on The Farm (still in Summertown, TN last I looked), we went swimming naked in the local stream, took showers outdoors when it rained, etc. Men, women and children all went nude, and it never seemed to cause problems. I became interested in covering up my body when I hit puberty; before that I simply didn’t care. At some point The Farm in general decided that public nudity was uncool; people thought it would “scare the grandparents.” They were probably right.

I’ve always though religious ideas about “modesty” were pretty weird. Covering up the body just makes it more interesting when you do get a glimpse. Seeing a woman’s ankles was a bit turn-on in the 1800’s, when Western women usually wore long, floor-length dresses and skirts.

I think Americans in general are way too uptight about sex and nudity. Swimwear should be optional at the beach or pool, and people should be able to wear skimpy clothing if the weather calls for it (or if they just want to dress that way).

However, all Buddhist monks should be required to wear long, heavy black robes the year round. Hee hee.

To piggyback off this, it just seems like societies decide what people’s “naughty bits” are and then throw fits when these aren’t properly covered, like women’s ankles. Living in the United States that means women’s breasts, both sexes genitals and butts. It’s conventional morality.

The desired effect is to lessen curiosity about these parts, but the opposite happens. People develop more and more curiosity and you get stuff like porn. Like, if you saw exposed breasts every single day of your life, how long would it take for you to get used to them and no longer be sexually aroused by them?

Why do humans wear clothes? Maybe because they get cold.. People are virtually hairless as you pointed out. Your huge human dong isn’t so big when the sun isn’t shining and there’s a bit of a breeze.. Most tropical people don’t wear many clothes but they do like to cover their genitals. I think it’s more about adornment or exaggerating the size than keeping them hidden away..

I think Americans in general are way too uptight about sex and nudity. Swimwear should be optional at the beach or pool, and people should be able to wear skimpy clothing if the weather calls for it (or if they just want to dress that way).

Are you serious? Americans are typically overweight and out of shape. Laws against public nudity are a public service.

…Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
There is
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time

As for permanent “heat”, one theory is that because human babies take so long to be relatively independent (like 12 years) that women developed the appearance of always being fertile in order to keep the make around to co-parent. The idea being that as long as there was a risk of some other guy getting your baby momma pregnant then the make would stick around to protect his genetic lineage.

In my opinion clothing is often used to control women’s role in society. High heels, corsets, dresses, burquas all limit mobility and activity. All the cultures with these arcane dress codes also decree women to be weak, subject to victim hood, and needing to be “protected”. It’s about control and subjugation.

Andre Breton was an interesting artist.
But sexually he was a victim of his time and place.
If you are denied visual access to the vagina
stockings and panties will turn you on
if you are denied even that..
who knows what way the kink will twist.

Long ago, in the nice little magazine called Science Digest, which gave me a lot of my current scientific background, I read about Tahiti and the missionaries. Before, Tahitians went almost naked, sex was easy, casual, and frequent, and rape was practically unknown. After the missionaries made the women cover up their tits, and taught all of them proper shame, rape was more common. And drinking the rum that came with Jesus.

Though the Church had some wonderful flowers, I can’t say what weighs more on the downside — the suffering through the wars, inquisitions, and the support of inequitable governments on the one hand, or the suffering caused by the sexual warping of so many people.

In the sixties, we experimented a lot with nudity. For us, it lessened social tension, while desensitizing sexual visual stimuli. That wasn’t a problem when we actually did have sex. All in all, it felt better, cleaner, even. I think we should have much more of it.

Rather than be corrupted by seeing nudity and sexual activity, children form a healthier attitude toward sex as part of life in cultures more casual about them, than those like ours that seek to “protect” children from sexual knowledge. Less inclination to child abuse in adults, too.

Keep in mind that modern human civilization hasn’t existed on earth for all that long, so evolution hasn’t had much time to affect how we look since the time humans invented agriculture and started spreading across the planet. Before that we originated in the temperate grassland regions of Africa and the Middle East where we had to hunt down fast-running prey, so humans evolved to become long-distance runners, and evolved relatively hairless bodies with lots of sweat glands so we would not overheat while running down our prey. We were able to dispense with furry bodies because we learned to make clothing to keep us warm while we weren’t running down the gazelles.

This is why nowadays the good looking fellas run shirtless in the park 😉 While running we don’t need much clothing (or fur).

The Patagons lived naked in a climate that is rather cold, the southern tip of Southern America. As soon as the missionaries had them covered, they started developing diseases.

I myself have experimented that living barefoot in winter (I admit though that the climate of Southern France is not that of Quebec) had allowed me to suffer much less of cold in winter. The other day, in Germany, I delighted walking barefoot in the snow. And the experience of the Saddhus in India who can clim Mount Kailash almost naked, and sit in the snow without being affected by cold is also IMO another indication that this nakedness is not that much of a problem in a good deal of the climates of Earth (though not all, of course).

But the arrogance of those women who delight in advertising their religion with their clothing (and trying to shame those who don’t) is not something that should be neglected…

“But the arrogance of those women who delight in advertising their religion with their clothing (and trying to shame those who don’t) is not something that should be neglected…”

Oh, now, Michel!

Perhaps you have a particular view of that in France. Here in the States, the hijab is no more arrogant than a cross on the chest, or a nenju on the wrist. It can take a bit of courage to declare yourself. When it’s forced, then it stops being an expression of religion, and an emblem of subjugation.

P Michel
++ It would rather seem that the more women are covered, the more they are submitted to male aggressions, like it is the cas in Egypt, for instance. ++

The more it’s forbidden the more it is tempting … off course.

Then it becomes a “cultural” factor.

In many places in Europe, Australia etc where this kind of “cultural” repression becomes the norm due to the concentration of this kind of believes, it is common for normal women passing through those “territories” to be at the very least verbally assaulted for being “immodestly” dressed, when it is not sexual harassment of rape.

Gays too are subject to the same treatment with added the risk of being punched, kicked, beaten with baseball bats, just for being themselves.

Sheik Taj el-Dene Elhilaly’s comments in a Ramadan sermon in a Sydney mosque have stirred a furor in the country with even Prime Minister John Howard weighing in with condemnation.

The cleric also said the judge in the case, who sentenced the rapists, had “no mercy.”

“But the problem, but the problem all began with who?” he said, referring to the women victims – whom he said were “weapons used by Satan.”

The victims of the vicious gang rapes are leading the national outcry – with some calling for deportation of the sheik. In a Sydney Daily Telegraph online poll, 84 percent of people said the Egyptian-born sheik should be deported.

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it … whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat?” the sheik said in his sermon. “The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

A 16-year-old girl, whose gang rape investigation was the subject of a secret police report, issued an open letter yesterday.

“You are a sad person who has no understanding of what really happens when these people inflict harm and degrading acts upon me or any other young girl,” she said.

Initially, the mufti of Australia would not back away from his comments. But today he apologized.

“I unreservedly apologize to any woman who is offended by my comments,” he said in a statement. “I had only intended to protect women’s honor.”

That was cool to learn the differences between all the different coverings. I did not know enough to tell the difference but I see them. It has been a shift in the communities I work in that are largely hispanic and Spanish speaking to see a few families who are Muslim and in various levels of covering coming in. The different types of dress are interesting to me.

On the clothing issue, I have always lived in colder areas and so I never really questioned wearing clothes (although swimming naked is really a cool experience). I have had some very liberal/hippy type friends who were very against bras. They thought the girls should be free! Never worked for me, they bounce a lot you know. Not very comfortable. So it is just something I can’t really get comfortable with, all this nudity, but I am okay with that too.

I would think it was difficult to not have an ashamed view of yourself if you had to be covered, for your honor or not it seems difficult. But I am sure it is more complicated, I can relate it to me not feeling comfortable just hanging out naked. I did have an interesting conversation with a 16 year old girl, friend of my son. She has been raised American and has family all over the world. She is a very attractive young lady and here in the US she dresses in typically tight or short clothing. She went overseas to a middle eastern country (can’t recall details) and dressed more modestly but still as an American. Then one day there was a ceremony or wedding where she wore some covering like the head one and a more modest dress. She said that was the only time she felt really relaxed and comfortable during that trip.

Still unemployed, I am required to check in at least once a week at a government-sponsored back-to-work scheme run by a Muslim charity based in a Mosque just down the road from me in Whitechapel – the proper old East End of London.

These days, the population of Whitechapel is overwhelmingly Muslim, in much the same way that it was overwhelmingly Jewish in the early years of the last century when my grandparents settled there having just got off the boat from Russia.

I’ve noticed that most of the young women working for the charity and coming and going in the streets round about who wear hijabs and niqabs – and very many do – also wear make-up (eye-liner and/or eye-shadow for the niqab-wearers) and jewellery (rings, bracelets, bangles etc.).

I don’t think it’s as absolute as you say. It’s true that there are places in the world where women who would rather not wear an Islamic head covering are coerced into it by social pressure or even law. But there are also many women, young women at that, who decide to wear it on their own, even though their family would accept their decision either way.

In my parents’ culture, as in much of Europe and even the United States, head covering for women was the norm — you were seen as somewhat loose if you did not cover your head/hair. Headscarves among the women of Eastern Europe were universal. Even in my life, I can remember when women would not be allowed in an Orthodox church wearing pants or without head covering. Remember when Catholic women would hairpin a handerchief to their head because they forgot a hat for a church serrvice?

Times change, and cultural mores. In some places, due to political and religious friction, it’s more of a big deal than others. Perhaps your views are colored by that? When I see a hijab, I do not assume the woman is oppressed, because I just don’t know.

There are young ladies in short skirts to be seen in the neighborhood. I imagine there are homosexuals, too. And I’ve certainly seen people holding bottles/cans of alcohol as they stroll about the place (if that’s what you mean), some of whom may be gay. Nothing’s ‘happened’ – not that’s worth re-telling. Not that I’ve witnessed.

Actually, the situation in France, from what a German girl friend told me, is that, in Paris, it is becoming ever so more difficult, especially in some areas of the Capital, to be shortly clothed. There are gangs of youths of Northern African and Black African origins who will insult and tease girls that are too “fashionable”. Those who are clearly of Muslim origins (or apparently so) will be chided for not wearing a veil.

It is less so in the South, but it can be different in the areas of the cities (Montpellier, Marseille, Toulouse) where the Muslim concentrations are thick. That veil thing, I think, is only the tip of the iceberg…

The main problem is that in some soft-headed campus subculture, those bearded fanatics are treated with sympathy because they are allegedly “resisting” to the “ZOG-imperialist evil domination”, and because they are “oppressed” (by whom if not themselves?).

This destroys any critical understanding of what happens.

They are “oppressed” and they cannot fully practice their “culture” …

Women, gay, jews etc hate becomes “inner cultural whatever” and denouncing it puts you on the “hate, racist” side of the things, while it is exactly the opposite.

But have you ever ever heard about this majority doing something in order to shut these “fanatics” up, the only thing i ever heard from them was “don’t be SO judgmental”.
(quote from Boubi)

This is on a side note, but I have heard they are trying to reclassify the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group. I know there have been many protests to their actions.

All over the world people are standing up to their group when they go too far. How many teenage girls are standing up (and how many are still under a covering that hides abuse) to get to go to school or to not be forced into marriage, even to just be free from a public beating because they were raped. As my example where the young lady was more comfortable covered, there is something to not being stared at constantly or draw negative attention. So the culture will make this shift together over time.

I know a woman’s body is only flesh and bone
A woman’s body is only flesh and bone

How come I can’t let go?
I’m between two worlds
I said oh yeah, I’m out of my mind
I’m between two worlds

There’s a lot of talk about the danger zone
There’s adventure novels ’bout takin’ to the road

I know a woman’s body is only flesh and bone
How come I can’t let go?”

-Tom Petty and Mike Campbell

She has attributed her youthful looks to a healthy love life and given hope to millions by saying she had the best sex of her life at 71.
So it is something of a let down to find out that even sex symbol Jane Fonda needs artificial help.
The Barbarella star has revealed she took the male sex hormone testosterone from the age of 70 to boost her libido.
Miss Fonda said it made ‘a huge difference’.

Humans are hairless because (among other reasons) this enables us to walk/jog long distances without overheating.

This is the problem with the moral relativism Brad displays when writing about Buddhist teachers exploiting their authority for sexual gratification: He cannot meaningfully comment on the practices of another religion. So they oppress women, but they’re all just human, right? In fact, they are doing the rest of us beknighted plebs a favour by revealing their imperfect humanity. Perhaps they deserve donations!

pola: by writing what you write, you (deliberately?) forget one crucial element of Brad’s relativism; which is that, in the context where Zen masters are considered to be endowed with the same infailibility as the Pope, and so by people who, secretly wish that they, themselves, will one day gain the very same infailibility, thos who really go overboard do us, in sorts, a favour by telling the same that, no, there is no infailibility, but that it’s no use to ascribe super powers to someone who can’t even keep his rut in check.

You can see this attitude as encouraging humans to act fallibly, or you can see it as paying attention to reality. I mean how many years before we notice that people don’t always do the best and most skillful action. Well of course they do! Therefore paying some attention to that instead of pretending our spiritual leaders are dieties is important. Then we are once again responsible for our own lives, our own salvation/enlightenment, and our own mistakes. Not nearly as much fun as giving those things over to a leader and considering ourselves really special, but actually real.

LOOKING SIDEWAYS
When we got older
and our tits began
to sag, it became
noticeable how
visiting friends,
just hanging out,
nothing special,
a social visit,
two beers or
twenty, began
to fall off,
in direct proportion
to the having
of kids, because
of course
you love
your own kids,
but other people’s
can be no fun
after awhile,
once their three
year old has thrown
the ashtray at your
head, or simply
pooped his pants
while you sat next
to him eating;
no matter
how drunk, you
tend to remember
enough to avoid
possibly repeating the
experience.
So the casual,
inexpensive social
life begins to fade,
and you are now
content to hang out
with the in-laws,
eat their food,
watch some tv,
play with the dog,
and go on home.
Emptiness, the
kind you thought
would set in if
you stayed single
sitting at some bar
staring past the
liquor bottles
at the your own
sad reflection
in the mirror,
lighting another
cigarette because
you hope between
the booze and the
nicotine, one or both
will soon kill you;
that same empty
feeling sets in
as you don’t smoke
but do drink too
much sitting
in your house
on a plushy couch
bought on sale
at tax refund time,
that existential
ennui, the suicidal
pull that makes
you not care at all
that your balls now
drag the toilet
water as you sit to
pee like a man,
or that your hairline
is so shocking that
your standard joke
about whats left of
it is getting wavy,
as in waving goodbye,
does not illicit laughter,
or pause on the part
of the listener after
which they disagree
with you, which was
actually the middle-period
because when they began
to say that, you knew
they meant yeah,
you’re right, buddy.
When we got older
and our tits began to
sag, it became noticeable
that in order to feel
the passage of time,
you have to avoid
all mirrors, love again
the kids who are
now graduating
from high school and
college, and check to see if
our friends have forgiven
us for getting shit
faced drunk at that
New Year’s Eve party
and grabbing their
asses.

There is something too, about the girl who goes to the Middle East and ends up feeling safer by doing as all the women: that’s the meaning of coercition. Part of my family (in law) is Lebanese. I know what it means.
And living here, in France, it is quite obvious that the ultimate goal is that all women eventually disappear…

But don’t forget that peoples affect eacg other, even when they just share a border. How about all the youth that is liberalized, or completely drops their culture under the influence of the dominant culture. Cultures are dynamic and *will* change. But when people feel threatened, they tend to take refuge in tradition.

As an American, I have little right to criticize other countries for how they treat their minorities, but I do think the apparent hostility toward economically stressed and culturally conservative minorities is counterproductive to a mutual cultural accommodation.

However, I have little hope that things will get better soon. People made functionally insane by their greed, hatred, and ignorance rule the world, so that not only the minorities feel stressed and threatened, but all people retreat into tribal identities to regard the Other as the enemy and cause of their problems.

This has happened over and over in recent times. Societies with just economies and nearly full employment have fewer social problems. But the people in charge have an interest in preventing most others from seeing how they do not govern in the general interest, but to further their own power and perquisites. One major way they do this is to encourage friction between the factions of the ruled, which tends to obscure this manipulation.

Simple principles, but I have watched them in play my whole life. The first thing we need to do is not get caught up in the emotions and identify with a part of society, as opposed to considering what is best for the whole.

Brad has previously drawn a distinction between a Buddhist and papal infallibilty on the grounds that Catholics don’t actually really believe the Pope is infallible, so maybe you should take your argument up with him. FWIW, I’m not claiming that “Zen masters” or anyone are remotely superior to other humans. brad is kind of doing that, in fact, but only if they behave in a more selfish and exploitative manner than ordinary people. It’s kind of giving people an opt out on basically decent behaviour

Let’s stop “this thing” about unsavory “cultural behaviours” and talk about gnosis. A few readers of the blog will like the subject.

Just reading news i went to know something more (from knowing nothing it’s a good increase anyway) about gnosticism.

WOW

Quoting from Wikipedia (which is not a scholarly opus, but a good start)
++ The word gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge”, which is often used in Greek philosophy in a manner more consistent with the English “enlightenment”. ++

The “gno-” in the Greek “gnosis” is cognate with the Indic “-jna” in “prajna.” But it may not be any more significant a connection than Don Juan being called a man of “knowledge.” Any spiritual endeavor can be cast as an effort to acquire, contact, or realize some kind of knowledge, be it subtle, or subtler.